Getting your bearings when you show up in the middle of a radio broadcast is always hard, and generally at least mildly comical.

So it was with me, back in New York more or less for keeps. The second the plane from Salt Lake City hit tarmac at JFK, I flipped on my radio. Something big […]

…if you want perspective, can-do, rah-rah, exhortations to stay the course, solidarity with our boys, or any of that shit. Because you're not going to get it. You're not going to get one little scrap of it.

This team sucks. And they don't suck in a wet-behind-the-ears way that makes you want to see what they'll […]

It's been a long time since I had no idea what the New York Mets were up to. Sure, there's been a game here and a game there that saw me nod off in the middle innings or when it was the 12th with no end in sight, games that left me to wake up […]

I'd say Vienna's lovely, but it isn't really. Its great architecture is cheek by jowl with a lot of Soviet-style apartment blockery (this is pretty much Eastern Europe) and when you look closely you realize a lot of the city is chipped and flaked and graffiti'ed and grotty.

But it does have a lot of […]

Statgeek dream site Baseball Prospectus recalculates the playoff odds after every game. Using some kind of amazing stats, they simulate the rest of the baseball season a million times, and tell you what percentage of the time each team winds up winning, taking the wild card, or finishing out of the money.

According to BP, […]

Greetings from London!

London turns out to be very nice. It's got marvelous, monumental governmental architecture everywhere, which I assume reflects a greater acceptance of state power than would have flown when our own country was building edifices, but that's another blog. (And a pretty dull one, too.) Though speaking of government, for better or for […]

At one point during last night's game, I turned to Emily and said something along the lines of “If this were Game 163, with a playoff spot on the line, Met fans all over the city would be dropping dead of heart attacks.”

As it was, it wasn't anything like that. (And no heart attacks. We're […]

For the Mets, it was the final off-day of the regular season. For me, it was a preview of some enforced downtime.

On Saturday afternoon I'm doing something utterly ridiculous from the perspective of faithful and fearful alike. I'm getting on a plane and going to London. From there, Vienna. And Milan. And Lausanne. And Geneva. […]